While I totally accept that many people like to compose in a square format, most people who spent their formative years shooting 6x6 film will admit that they spent their time watching art directors and designers cropping their images.

It's a fact that *most* of the time, the world is viewed through rectangles, and that isn't going to change.

With this in mind, if someone told me that they're going to extend to 50Mp and would I like those pixels distributed in the shape of a square or a rectangle, I know which I'd choose!

While I totally accept that many people like to compose in a square format, most people who spent their formative years shooting 6x6 film will admit that they spent their time watching art directors and designers cropping their images.

True, but that's the point. With a 6x6 there's much more than simply a horizontal vs. a vertical rectangle. There's much more latitude over WHERE in the 6x6 frame that rectangle comes from! Might be wishful thinking, but dreaming is free...

Mike.

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If your mind is attuned to beauty, you find beauty in everything.~ Jean Cooke ~

True, but that's the point. With a 6x6 there's much more than simply a horizontal vs. a vertical rectangle. There's much more latitude over WHERE in the 6x6 frame that rectangle comes from! Might be wishful thinking, but dreaming is free...Mike.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=130310\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

You have a point.

And thinking about it a bit more: I use a Gretag Macbeth CC and a basICColor grey card in every shot I take. Pulling back to incorporate these uses up a shed load of pixels.

It isn't always possible to shoot with and without and, for editing, I much prefer to have both the cards and the subject (I shoot fine art mostly) in the same frame.

Presumably, given that the throat size, viewing circle etc., etc., are there since film days, it 's only a matter of adding pixels to a larger (6x6cm) chip? Or does the increased size raise technical issues?

37mm square sensors have been around for ages and work very well on a 645 body. You have to get used to using shorter focal lengths than you would with 6x6, but otherwise the experience of shooting with them isn't really much different to film once you get used to the vagaries of the back itself. I have been using a square-format, 16 megapixel monochrome back made by Megavision on my Bronica system for a year now -- I've had some great results and it continues to be a pleasure to use.

There *is* a learning curve, though, because (at least the B&W sensor) has so much more resolution than film that you have to get used to being a *lot* more careful, both in terms of depth of field and in terms of camera shake if you want to get great results. This would be less extreme with a colour chip, which typically would have just about half the resolution in each axis, or maybe slightly more, which is rather more forgiving. Moving to using a heavy Bogen tripod with a really solid geared head helped hugely -- hand-holding is not really such a great option because it's very much easier to see the blur it causes.

I've proposed many times before, a "universal" 42X42 sensor. The size increase is not much, but enough big for when cropping to rectangular (if desired), you end up with an effective sensor size bigger than a full-frame dslr.

This modest size increase would probably yield also a modest increase in cost. But the real beauty of it would be that being a 42mm square sensor, it would fit tightly in a 645 camera.

So we can have a dback for 6X6 cameras with a square sensor not much smaller than full frame, something around a 1.3X crop factor. Very importantly, it would allow a 645 camera to be handle as a square camera to use it as a full-time waist level finder style and without ever turning the camera for horizontals to verticals. That's why I call it "Universal". A "convenient compromise" between an ideal sensor for 6X6 and an ideal sensor for 645.

"Convenient Compromise", "Ideal" where convenient and ideal mean truly affordable.If the idea could be accepted by consumers, this sensor could be in digital backs for the thousands of "square" and 645 medium format cameras already sold for decades.

RegardsEduardo

Quote from: SockPuppet,Jul 31 2007, 12:55 PM

37mm square sensors have been around for ages and work very well on a 645 body. You have to get used to using shorter focal lengths than you would with 6x6, but otherwise the experience of shooting with them isn't really much different to film once you get used to the vagaries of the back itself. I have been using a square-format, 16 megapixel monochrome back made by Megavision on my Bronica system for a year now -- I've had some great results and it continues to be a pleasure to use.